Room
Room F3 - Track 3: Talks
Audience
Testers, Scrum Masters, Agile Teams
Key-Learning
- How might Scrum Mastery reshape your Testing and enhance your Testing Skills in an Agile Team.
- The benefits and added value that a QA might add to a Scrum Master profile.
- Real-life examples of testers playing the role of Scrum Masters in a Scale Agile Framework, the challenges that come with it, and how to overcome them
- What are some of the visions for a more promising Testing future?
I remember when I was first invited to play the role of Scrum Master…
Back then, my company of 2000+ employees had just launched an Agile Transformation at Scale. Simultaneously, I was switching teams, to join a newly born Agile team that’s totally new to me. I was motivated, yet scared. There was a battle in my head that looked pretty much like this:
“How can I be the Scrum Master of a team that I know nothing about?
“Will I have enough capacity? Scrum Mastery Trainings? What if I disappoint my team?”
“As a QA, how will I be able to be a Scrum Master without having any coding background?”
“How would my new role affect my testing skills? The testing activity inside my team?”
(…)
After this war had settled in my head, I’ve decided to:
“Challenge [myself]. It’s the only path which leads to growth” – Morgan Freeman
Today, I am glad to have accepted this challenge.
The road was bumpy. Keeping my team continuously motivated and improving its quality in the context of Agile were few of the challenges I have faced. Joining an entirely new team, I couldn’t understand a word they would share in dailies, let alone the work they used to perform. So, how was I supposed to be their facilitator? Did I mention that my entire team was located thousands of miles away? The physical distance was just another bridge that I had to cross.
I’ve come a long way! Today, I can assure you, out of experience, that there is no better fit than QAs taking over Scrum Mastery roles. As a matter of fact, there are several advantages that come with these two titles intertwined together. Reducing the bridge between developers and QAs is just one example. Developing your testing skills though better implementation of test strategies is another one. A great benefit lies as well in the quality metrics in the context of Agile.
As a QA Manager with almost 8 years of experience in testing and one of the first on-boarders of Agile in my company, I ask you to join me in my Track Talk so I can walk you through my experience on how I onboarded my Scrum Mastery role, the bumps my team and I have faced, and the effects of this new role on my team, myself, and my testing skills.